State of the Union

So, I figured I would start a thread about what everyone thought about what was said last night. I personally found myself yelling at the television screen most of the evening and getting myself very worked up. In general I found a lot of what he said to be hypocritical. I think the way that he has proposed the Social Security reform policy is a horrible idea. I also don&#39;t know how you can want to write discrimination into our constitution and then 3 minutes later say that this is a country that shows equal opportunity to everyone, offering them freedom, security and peace of mind. I also like how the weapons of mass destruction cannot fall into the hands of people that don&#39;t like the US but it&#39;s okay for us and our allies to obtain them. There is a lot more to be said but I really get so worked up when I think about it all that I have to stop. :angry: SO, how do you feel about the state of the union?

At one time, I believed "privatizing" Social Security was a great idea...there would be a tremendous pool of money to invest in new technologies and new corporations, to buy machine tools, conduct research and really oil the economic machine.

Ah, if only&#33;

Alas, after seeing what has happened in these United States over the last few years, I am now reasonably certain that my vision of privatizing social security will, sadly, not come to pass as all we shall end up creating is another generation of robber barons with no moral compunction about ruining people&#39;s retirements.

As far as weapons of mass destruction go, the United States has always been hypocritical: Britain, yes, the Soviet Union no....France, maybe, China, no....Israel, oh yes, Pakistan...no way. Well, I am here to tell you that any reasonably developed nation can have nuclear weapons...as far as we know, eight nations have made nuclear weapons....and while the Americans will say "there are far more ways for it to go wrong than for it to go right," (true enough) even though insofar as we know, everyone who has tried has succeeded on the first attempt. And just remember...all it takes is determination and will more than technology, know how and money. As Prime Minister, Ali Bhutto once remarked that his country (Pakistan) would have nuclear weapons even if the people had to eat grass.

Biological weapns only compound the problem, as the costs of entry are so very much lower - and the apparent destructive potential is far, far greater.

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1. Basic hygiene practices can prevent any use of biological weapons. Ditto for chemical weapons. Both are primarily area denial weapons; they hurt both groups, but the defending force will generally have access to more medical equipment than the invading force. If Bush is really worried about both, socialized medicine might be the remedy.
2. Privatization . . . Bad idea. Privatization is basically the idea that adding a middle man will somehow lower prices. In this economy we obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Originally posted by jeepwranglerboi@Feb 3 2005, 01:29 PM...SO, how do you feel about the state of the union?

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Don&#39;t you mean State of the Empire? Spitting Mad. :angry: I&#39;d had enough of Dumbya as govenor, eight years of him as Head Idiot of the U.S. is just unbelievable. I added a new sticker to the back of my car last night that sums up my opinion of the situation quite well. Here&#39;s what it looks like:

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I watched every word he had to say. Still sick to my stomach. Might as well have been a campaign speech. And golly gee, he can just fix the entire world&#33; And just who the fuck did he keep "winking" at???????????? 47 and 1/2 months to go. It&#39;s going to be a rough.

I didn&#39;t get to watch it either, but part of me thinks that avoiding it probably wasn&#39;t a bad idea. I hate having this attitude, but I have so little faith in the Administration nowadays that I feel like it would be more beneficial to put my head in the sand just long enough to start rooting for the next Democrat to run through the presidential mill. Either that, or bury myself so hopefully the bombs won&#39;t blow me up too. I can get as angry as I want to about the run our country is being run, but that anger eventually simmers down to hopelessness.

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Same silly claims and unrealistic expectations every year. I used to find the pageantry of it interesting, but haven&#39;t watched any all the way through in at least ten years. No matter how much you like or dislike the president, it&#39;s just a pep rally for his party, grumbling by the opposition, and a whole lot of hot air.

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Originally posted by jeepwranglerboi@Feb 3 2005, 01:29 PMSo, I figured I would start a thread about what everyone thought about what was said last night. I personally found myself yelling at the television screen most of the evening and getting myself very worked up. In general I found a lot of what he said to be hypocritical. I think the way that he has proposed the Social Security reform policy is a horrible idea. I also don&#39;t know how you can want to write discrimination into our constitution and then 3 minutes later say that this is a country that shows equal opportunity to everyone, offering them freedom, security and peace of mind. I also like how the weapons of mass destruction cannot fall into the hands of people that don&#39;t like the US but it&#39;s okay for us and our allies to obtain them. There is a lot more to be said but I really get so worked up when I think about it all that I have to stop. :angry: SO, how do you feel about the state of the union?

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With Bush as President, it is going to hell in a hand basket :angry:
First the first tme in my memory, I boycotted watching the farce, I relied on what I read in the newspapers, and sound bites on TV.

But I already know about social security. We have a plan that MAY run out fo money between 2042 and 2052. To fix that, we are going to divert some of the money to private account. Any fool should figure out that either:

1. That will make social security go backrupt very soon instead of years away.
2. Benefits will be slashed. I read as much as 30 % and disability social security may be done away with.

We will make a giant step backwards and become the least civilized developed nation in the world. Only the rich and upper middle class will have much. The rest if society can get ready for poverty if they become disabled or grow old.

Those private accounts: Who is going to guarentee them? Here is the deal. They apear to pay better. But they don&#39;t. Social security gives three percent rasies every year. Your private account will always pay what you get the first year. My mother is getting twice in social security benefitswhat she started out at some years ago. She has lived that long. Most of us plan to live long as well.

I am religious and a Christian. I hope God is not vengeful. Because if he is we are in a heap of trouble. We have gone to war "IN HIS NAME." If God has emotions, I&#39;m sure HE is pissed off about that. I just hope HE isn&#39;t a wrathful God like the religious right says he is. If so, we are going to get slammed big time from up above.

One of my beloved students lays dead in the cold hard ground because of Bush. Yea, I am a bit bitter. My student, who as an adult came to see me in the hospital every day when I was very ill, died for oil profits. Yea, you could say I am bitter.

Precious in the sight of God are his children. We should let the middle age and old men fight wars. We would have fewer of them if we did. I am tired of killing our children in the name of war. Not only our childen, but theirs as well.

Yes, I will read and keep informed. No, I won&#39;t watch that asshole on TV if I can avoid it.

I guess you can tell how Freddie, the one Jana calls genuine and eloguent and other names to describe a true southern gentelman feels about this president and this state of the union and this war. You have met Freddie&#39;s alter ego.

OK, I have vented my anger. The sweet Freddie can come back into the room now.

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Whether or not God is vengeful, or even exists, there&#39;s a much more pressing matter: The Bush administration has conveniently ignored reality. And reality has this funny way of kicking you in the balls so hard that you&#39;re coughing up jizz for a week when you ignore it long enough.

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Originally posted by Socket4Plug+Feb 3 2005, 09:56 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Socket4Plug &#064; Feb 3 2005, 09:56 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-jeepwranglerboi@Feb 3 2005, 01:29 PM...SO, how do you feel about the state of the union?

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Don&#39;t you mean State of the Empire? Spitting Mad. :angry: I&#39;d had enough of Dumbya as govenor, eight years of him as Head Idiot of the U.S. is just unbelievable. I added a new sticker to the back of my car last night that sums up my opinion of the situation quite well. Here&#39;s what it looks like:

[/b][/quote]
Those may be very popular world wide too soon. That is is Homeland Security doesn&#39;t put you in Cuba with the other detainees.
*From reading these posts, sounds like the whole damn LPSG will be there.

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Sweet Freddie, you wouldn&#39;t be a whole person without your alter ego, we love you for all of it. You know, I don&#39;t really even know where all this "wmd" shit came from, I was there watching the TV along with everyone else, but I truly don&#39;t remember. I was trying to give bush a chance when he took us into Afghanistan after 9/11- it seemed a reasonable response. It felt unsatisfying that we could never capture Bin Laden, despite the number of close calls. What bothered me most was that right from the begining, bush was warning us that this might take longer than we thought. He was making it clear that this was not a war about one issue or event. Well, alright, Al-Quaeda did need to be stopped, or at least hindered. But from the beginning, the news of wmds in Iraq seemed shady, no proof was ever offered to the public, no sources revealed, and as it turned out, it was a hoax. But hell, we&#39;d gotten us in there, found out how gullible we are, so why not use our moralistic convictions against us? There&#39;s quite a lot of money to be made on oil, and he can make himself look like a hero instead of the money-grubbing bastard he really is. Besides, he&#39;s never been successful at anything else, it must be very reassuring to have finally found his niche- killing and bamboozling for profit and fun. Grr.

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Originally posted by jonb@Feb 4 2005, 12:36 PMWhether or not God is vengeful, or even exists, there&#39;s a much more pressing matter: The Bush administration has conveniently ignored reality. And reality has this funny way of kicking you in the balls so hard that you&#39;re coughing up jizz for a week when you ignore it long enough.

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Jon, I mostly believe what you are saying, but I have to disagree on one point. In order to ignore something you have to recognzie that it exists. I don&#39;t think this president and his administration can even recognize reality. The fools haven&#39;t realized that we have attacked a religion and culture of one billion people whose religion allows even more fanatical behavior then fundie Chrsitianity (not to be confused with Jesus Christianity). This giant of a culture can slowly bring the greatest nation on earth down. (Greatest in terms of economic power). We are in for a war of attrition that may last decades or longer:Two cultures incompatible colliding. Communism had no God to be loyal to and it collapsed. Religion doesn&#39;t collapse as fast and sometimes never collapses. Judaism is an example. The Jews should have been wiped out years ago. Empires have tried now for over 2000 years to do it and none have succeeded yet.

Oh fundie Christianity will survive all right. But it won&#39;t be in a rich nation that controls the world. We are seeing the beginning of the dissolution of the American Republic established in 1787 upon the ratification of the Constitution. We will have some kind of dictatorship or collective group before the fall.

Our only hope is to do something in 2008. 2012 may be too late.

By the way, I greatly admire your intellect. I don&#39;t see how one person can know so much technical information about so many different subjects. My hat is off to you. I know I don&#39;t have that grasp on details and terms. I have the "big picture" mentality. Details and terms get away from me sometiemes.

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Yeah, but reality still kicks you square in the nuts if you&#39;re not careful. You can&#39;t fuck everyone you see and not worry about disease, and you can&#39;t go invading every country you see and not worry about terrorists.

From these entries, it sounds like LPSG members have big brains as well as big dicks. I can&#39;t even stand to watch him anymore, I have to change the channel. That&#39;s pretty dangerous, we can&#39;t risk just ignoring what is happening in this country. OTH, I need a bit of a break from seeing that creep for a few months. I&#39;ll be back on the critical attack as soon as I recover from the elelction/inauguration. Attended a Democratic Party function on inauguration night and intend to keep doing whatever I can to actively help defeat as many neoconservatives as possible in upcoming elections.

They&#39;re using Orwell&#39;s "1984" and Hitler&#39;s tactical playbook as guidebooks for the administration.

1. Basic hygiene practices can prevent any use of biological weapons. Ditto for chemical weapons. Both are primarily area denial weapons; they hurt both groups, but the defending force will generally have access to more medical equipment than the invading force. If Bush is really worried about both, socialized medicine might be the remedy.

In combatting modern BW agents, basic hygiene is effective only to a point - and a rather inconsequential point at that when you consider:

Certain of the newest generations of BW agents don&#39;t make their presence known until it is too late and large numbers of people have been infected.

Some newer BW agents target certain races - nothing new there, Mother Nature has done the same thing since forever, but now the targeting can be very specific even to the point of exterminating people in a given locality/family, and donewith human intention. Hence, it is conceivable these agents could be used strategically and offensively.

Certain pathogenic agents can be lethal upon infection with a single organism. I have heard it said that 70,000 molecules of botulin will kill a systemically healthy adult male. In truth, there are genetically engineered strains of E. coli that make botulin - now, the people who think "basic hygiene" is an adequate response to BW say..."Oh, they will never survive against wild strains of E. coli, as they devote so much of their available resources to making botulin." Well, do you want to take that chance? Do you really want to go up against something like that with soap and water?

Functional synthetic polio viruses have been made; the smallpox genome is understood - the 1918 influenza genome is understood, for God&#39;s sake. This information is published. We are playing in areas where we shouldn&#39;t. Some things are better left buried in the Arctic permafrost, like the 1918 influenza. Why would they go to dig it up? Oh, to make a vaccine? Fine. Then why did the US Army do it and, not, say, the Public Health Service? And why do they think they can make an effective vaccine against something that mutates as rapidly as influenza? All it is is guesswork and, more oftenthan not, they guess incorrectly.

To me, it is very scary, as genetic engineering - when I was an undergraduate - was on the edge of being science fiction. Now, it is seems like something every third year undergrad can do. A half a million dollars, some easily obtainable equipment, some restriction enzymes....Cl. botulinum is freely available in soil almost everywhere. Just dig it up. E. coli is part of the normal intestinal flora. Here a Q-tip should suffice.

And what&#39;s really scary...the people who made the synthetic polio virus...they did it just to show everyone it could be done. Well, if they can, so can someone else.

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I am not in the least bit interested in what that lazy vindictive little man has to say. The more I hear him talk, the less confidence, trust or respect I have for anything that comes out of the White House.